1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to valuable documents such as order bills of lading, negotiable certificates of cargo insurance, lottery or other valuable tickets, and other such documents that may be bought and sold or otherwise may be subject to transactions that require verification of authenticity.
2. Description of Related Art
Currently, negotiable documents are subject to copying, alteration and unauthorized creation. Unauthorized creation is possible even when the document is printed on serial numbered security paper since the paper stock itself could have been counterfeit or stolen. For these reasons, it is usually not possible to verify the authenticity of such a document without communication back to an issuing authority. One example of this nature is U.S. Pat. No. 5,816,619 issued to Schaede. The document of Schaede uses a foil hologram.
Current practice is in some cases even less secure because documents are not printed on serial numbered security paper due to the costs of creating, distributing, securing, and tracking the paper and its usage. U.S. Pat. No. 5,497,990 uses a serial numbered currency note or bill as a lottery input mechanism and prints a receipt which is the evidence that is used to claim a prize. If the same note is played three times, and the number derived from the note happens to be selected by the lottery computer as the winning number, the prize will be divided three ways. Thus in this teaching, the note is used only as input to avoid printing tickets, game cards or betting slips and not to verify authenticity. To prevent fraud, the receipt must still be printed on special paper.
When an issuing agency issues documents on behalf of multiple issuing authorities, the issuing agent must acquire, securely store, and track the paper stock of each issuing authority. This is mitigated only somewhat when there is an industry wide common paper stock such as is used for airline tickets.
The use of serial numbered security paper stock limits the ability of legitimate but geographically dispersed participants in a transaction from issuing a document due to the limited distribution of the security paper stock. Also in those instances where a document is time limited, the special paper can not be reused and therefore the cost of the paper becomes significant.
An example of the current art in electronic commerce is U.S. Pat. No. 6,032,150 issued to Nguyen. This patent describes a system for allowing a server to grant or deny access of information in a web document based upon a serial numbered program applet. Another example relating to electronic commerce is U.S. Pat. No. 5,790,677 issued to Fox et al. Telecommunication at the moment of an access request is inherently required for these patented methods to function.
A further example is U.S. Pat. No. 5,750,972 issued to Botvin. Botvin describes a document for conducting electronic financial transactions using either paper or electronic facsimile transmission of drafts drawn on a drawee bank. Again there is no means provided for a third or fourth party to verify authenticity without contacting the drawer/payee.